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.Dd June 26, 2008 .Dt CORE 5 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm core .Nd memory image file format .Sh SYNOPSIS n sys/param.h .Sh DESCRIPTION A small number of signals which cause abnormal termination of a process also cause a record of the process's in-core state to be written to disk for later examination by one of the available debuggers. (See .Xr sigaction 2 . ) This memory image is written to a file named by default
a core.pid , where .Va pid is the process ID of the process, in the
a /cores directory, provided the terminated process had write permission in the directory, and the directory existed.
p The maximum size of a core file is limited by .Xr setrlimit 2 . Files which would be larger than the limit are not created.
p The core file consists of the .Xr Mach-O 5 header as described in the .Aq Pa mach-o/loader.h file. The remainder of the core file consists of various sections described in the .Xr Mach-O 5 header. .Sh NOTE Core dumps are disabled by default under Darwin/Mac OS X. To re-enable core dumps, a privileged user must do one of the following
p * Edit
a /etc/launchd.conf or
a $HOME/.launchd.conf and add a line specifying the limit
a limit core unlimited
p * A privileged user can also enable cores with
a launchctl limit core unlimited
p * A privileged user can also enable core files by using .Xr ulimit 1 or .Xr limit 1 depending upon the shell. .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr gdb 1 , .Xr setrlimit 2 , .Xr sigaction 2 , .Xr Mach-O 5 , .Xr launchd.conf 5 , .Xr launchd.plist 5 , .Xr sysctl 8 .Sh HISTORY A .Nm file format appeared in .At v6 .